2020: THE YEAR OF BANANA BREAD. Unofficial … or was it Official? … Food of the Pandemic. Rivaled only perhaps by our sourdough starters. Who knew there would be so much banana bread in this year? I think that I might have ten new recipes this year alone. And I couldn’t help but make one more loaf just to shut this year down. May there be lots of other recipe in our futures and thanks for being there this year. Tomorrow will be just another new day and we can make and bake and share something new and different.
desserts
Every year when I make my Christmas Cookies, I try out one or two new recipes. Or new-to-me recipes. Some are traditional cookies, some are modern cookies. One of the two new types that I made this year are these: Speculaas (Dutch) aka Spekulatius (German). They are a traditional Dutch spice cookie, usually rolled very thin and then imprinted with a design. While I have a few imprinting rolling pins, my dough wasn’t cooperating particularly, so instead of the imprinting pin, I went with a Christmas-y cookie stamp. All the same in the end. These cookies are very nice, a lovely traditional spice and will definitely stay in the cookie madness repertoire.
So I’m plugging away at Cookie Madness, but I couldn’t help but make one last pie in these pre-Thanksgiving days. This one uses heirloom apples called Baldwins that I got at Russell Orchards last weekend. Very nice apples; firm and not too tart. Loving my lattice work too. The rim was a little messy so I used a leaf cookie cutter to pretty it up a little bit.













